“Care, Violence and the Lifestyle dispositif: A Foucauldian Analysis of Transformations in Social Welfare”

Christopher Mayes (University of Sydney), Christopher Mayes

PHILOSOPHIES OF DIFFERENCE SERIES #2

Thursday, 18th August 2016, 6:00PM-7:30PM

Room 9.3.6A, Building 9, RMIT University (cnr Bowen & Franklin)

Care, Violence and the Lifestyle dispositif: A Foucauldian Analysis of Transformations in Social Welfare

Christopher Mayes (University of Sydney)

Abstract:

In its everyday usage, the concept of lifestyle appears to refer to a set of stable and concrete phenomena. Politicians valorise their nation’s lifestyle as uniquely good and worthy of protection, medical professionals fear the effect of the modern lifestyle on global health, and environmentalists chide the Western lifestyle as a primary cause of climate change. In these instances the intended audience is assumed to know what is being referred to, however, closer inspection reveals lifestyle as an imprecise and vague idea.

To explore the role of lifestyle in political discourse, this paper develops Michel Foucault’s notion of dispositif as an enabling network through which individual choice and behaviour is made visible and governable. Although prevalent in a variety of social policy domains, lifestyle rhetoric is extensively deployed in obesity and social welfare programmes. Using examples from bioethics and public health, I illustrate the way obese bodies are characterised as a potential threat to society, thereby justifying strategies of coercion and stigmatization directed at people who are overweight or obese. I argue that the lifestyle dispositif is part of an on going transformation of social welfare towards individualised welfare that secures and cares for “healthy subjects”, while excluding and exposing “irresponsible subjects” to subtle forms of violence.

Bio:

Christopher Mayes is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine (University of Sydney). He is the author of The Biopolitics of Lifestyle: Foucault, Ethics and Health Choices (2016) and articles on social theory and health, bioethics and food studies. He is currently writing a book that critically examines contemporary political and ethical discourses of food and agriculture in Australia. 

WHEN:

6PM – 7:30PM, Thursday 18th August 2016

WHERE:

Building 9, Level 3, Rooms 6A & 6B

RMIT City Campus (cnr Bowen & Franklin)

* Free, no registration required *

ABOUT:

The Philosophies of Difference group (PoD) are a Melbourne-based group of scholars working in continental philosophy and interested in problems that have been marginal to the dominant traditions of Western thought. We engage with approaches including: critical philosophy of race, decolonial thought, feminist theory, Indigenous studies, philosophy of disability, philosophy of nature, queer theory and trans philosophy. The second PoD seminar series will consist of weekly seminars beginning in August 2016. We especially welcome participation and contribution from women, people of colour, and other minority groups. 

Philosophies of Difference is supported by the Communication Politics and Culture Research Centre at RMIT. 

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